Emily Harris

Emily Harris

Kainaz Amaria
/ NPR

International Correspondent Emily Harris is based in Jerusalem as part of NPR's Mideast team. Her post covers news related to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She began this role in March of 2013.

Over her career, Harris has served in multiple roles within public media. She first joined NPR in 2000, as a general assignment reporter. A prolific reporter often filing two stories a day, Harris covered major stories including 9/11 and its aftermath, including the impact on the airline industry; and the anthrax attacks. She also covered how policies set in Washington are implemented across the country.

In 2002, Harris worked as a Special Correspondent on NOW with Bill Moyer, focusing on investigative storytelling. In 2003 Harris became NPR's Berlin Correspondent, covering Central and Eastern Europe. In that role, she reported regularly from Iraq, leading her to be a key member of the NPR team awarded a 2005 Peabody Award for coverage of the region.

Harris left NPR in December 2007 to become a host for a live daily program, Think Out Loud, on Oregon Public Broadcasting. Under her leadership Harris's team received three back to back Gracie Awards for Outstanding Talk Show, and a share in OPB's 2009 Peabody Award for the series "Hard Times." Harris's other awards include the RIAS Berlin Commission's first-place radio award in 2007 and second-place in 2006. She was a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford University in 2005-2006.

A seasoned reporter, she was asked to help train young journalist through NPR's "Next Generation" program. She also served as editorial director for Journalism Accelerator, a project to bring journalists together to share ideas and experiences; and was a writer-in-residence teaching radio writing to high school students.

One of the aspects of her work that most intrigues her is why people change their minds and what inspires them to do so.

Outside of work, Harris has drafted a screenplay about the Iraq war and for another project is collecting stories about the most difficult parts of parenting.

When his cellphone rang Friday night, on Nov. 13, Joel Touitou Laloux didn't answer. The sun had long since set, the Jewish Sabbath was under way, and he doesn't use electronics on Shabbat.

He recognized the number. One of his sons was calling from Paris. Laloux, who managed the Bataclan theater for decades until he and his family sold it in September, now lives in Ashdod, a coastal city in southern Israel.

Finally, after his son's number flashed three or four times, Laloux answered.

#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreadshashtag. On Fridays, we highlight some of the best stories.

Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard is expected to be released from U.S. federal prison on Friday after 30 years behind bars for passing on U.S. government secrets to Israel.

When the Navy analyst was caught, his arrest initially caused consternation in Israel and denials that senior Israeli officials knew what he was doing.

But calls for to free Pollard early were soon taken up by Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited Pollard in prison in 2002. Netanyahu had served previously as prime minister, but held no public office at that time.

Europe is vowing to prosecute smugglers who pack migrants onto ships making dangerous journeys from the Mideast. It's not an easy job: Among the challenges is tracking down smugglers who make it their business to keep their full identities hidden from the migrants they move.

But survivors of a particularly tragic shipwreck in September of last year have provided specific information about the smugglers who allegedly rammed their boat, leaving hundreds to drown in the Mediterranean.

Israel already uses surveillance cameras to peer into the Temple Mount, as it is called by Jews, or the Al-Aqsa mosque, as it is commonly referred to by Muslims. But no cameras are actually inside the Old City compound, and no footage is shared between Israeli security agencies and the Muslim religious authority that runs the site sacred to both faiths.

Now a project is underway to change that, putting 24-hour surveillance cameras in the compound and, at some point, streaming video from there onto the Internet.